The feed for the popular livestream “lofi hip hop radio – beats to relax/study to” ended, causing a video to appear on the site that would take you more than a year-and-a-half to watch.

Not that there would be much to see.

The stream, vaguely akin to old school pirate radio stations but without the limitation of transmission distance, is meant to be listened to rather than watched, primarily intended as background music for relaxing/studying to.

The only visual is a looping animation of a young woman doing her homework, which was introduced to fans after a previous animation from a Studio Ghibli movie caused the stream to be taken down due to copyright claims.

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The new animation was intended to protect the stream from further copyright issues, but it didn’t stop the stream operator, a Parisian man named Dmitri who goes by the name ChilledCow on the video-sharing platform, from getting stung again.

He took to Twitter after receiving news of the ban.

The ChilledCow channel has almost 4.5 million followers, rivalling the audiences of other, more desperate channels forced to resort to things like making up lies about their girlfriends dying for clicks.

The stream’s almost cult-like status has elevated it to the point where the relaxing stream even has its own memes.

The news of its suspension was received poorly by followers, who went into a period of semi-ironic mourning.

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Luckily, the stream didn’t stay dead for long.

While previously it was copyright that took down the station, this time it appears to be a far more potent threat: YouTube’s own incompetence.

Following the backlash, which came at a blessed time of relative quiet in the ongoing debate surrounding the content YouTube decides to delete or leave up, the video sharing platform explained the suspension was a simple mistake.

Dmitri quickly got the stream back online and shared the good news with followers on Twitter.

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“My account has been unbanned, thank you from the bottom of my heart for the tremendous support, I’m grateful to have such an amazing community,” Dmitri said in a separate tweet.

YouTube’s algorithms that promote videos based on how much people engage with them are thought to be one of the reasons the current crop of streaming stations managed to gain such success.

Users leaving the stream on in the background as well as interacting with one another in the chat box to the side of the stream help boost its engagement and wider promotion.

It’s thought a different algorithm, the Content ID one that identifies copyrighted content and issues strikes automatically, could be to blame for the mistaken deletion.

Stream operators are in murky territory when it comes to copyright, with many of them now working directly with smaller artists to feature their music.

This doesn’t stop that music triggering copyright violations through mistaken identifications or uncleared samples.

Do you ever listen to music on YouTube? Let us know what you think in the comments below.